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Moonshine

Moonshine is real-time projection-mapping and warp tooling that runs inside TouchDesigner. It's sold as a perpetual license — pay once, use forever.

This page covers how Moonshine works with your TEC ID: activation, where your key lives, supported operating systems, and what happens when you go offline.

How Moonshine fits into TEC ID

Moonshine is a set of components and tools that load inside TouchDesigner. When you launch a TouchDesigner project that uses Moonshine, the Moonshine components check in with TEC ID to verify your license is active on this computer. The check runs in the background — you'll see a brief status indicator on first activation, and after that, normal use looks no different from any other TouchDesigner project.

If you're new to your TEC ID, start at Getting started.

Buying Moonshine

  • Standard price: $549 USD, one-time.
  • Founders price: $399 USD for the first 200 people on the waitlist.
  • Trial: 14 days, fully featured, no card required.

Buy at [moonshine.software/buy]. After checkout, you'll get a welcome email with a magic-link to your TEC ID and your MOON-... license key. See Billing for invoices and refund details.

Activating Moonshine

  1. Install Moonshine following the install guide in the Moonshine documentation (separate from this site).
  2. Open a TouchDesigner project that uses Moonshine. The first time Moonshine loads, you'll see a small activation dialog.
  3. Paste your license key — it starts with MOON-. Find it on your TEC ID dashboard under Licenses → Moonshine.
  4. Click Activate. Moonshine talks to TEC ID and either activates this machine against a free seat, or tells you all your seats are in use (in which case, see Devices).

That's it. The dialog closes and Moonshine loads normally.

[Screenshot: Moonshine activation dialog inside TouchDesigner]

Re-activating after a hardware change

If you swap motherboards, reinstall your OS, or otherwise change your machine in a way that makes it look "new" to TEC ID, Moonshine will prompt you to activate again on next launch. If you have a free seat, it just activates. If not, release the old fingerprint from your dashboard. See Devices → hardware upgrades.

Supported operating systems

Moonshine matches whatever TouchDesigner officially supports:

  • Windows 10 / 11 (64-bit)
  • macOS 12 Monterey or later (Intel and Apple Silicon)

Linux is not supported because TouchDesigner doesn't support Linux. If TD adds Linux support someday, we'll add it too.

You also need a recent build of TouchDesigner. The Moonshine release notes specify which TD build series each Moonshine version supports.

Where your license lives on disk

When Moonshine activates, it stores a small, encrypted token on your computer so it doesn't have to ask TEC ID every time you open the app. The token lives in your user profile, in a location TouchDesigner uses for its own preferences. You don't need to back it up or move it manually — if you reinstall, just paste the license key again.

We chose to encrypt the token because anyone with file-system access to your computer would otherwise be able to copy the token to another machine. With the encryption, the token is bound to this user account on this computer.

If you're cleaning up a machine and want to remove all trace of Moonshine activation, release the seat from your dashboard first, then delete the Moonshine support folder. The exact path is in the Moonshine support documentation.

What happens offline

Moonshine is designed for live, performance, and installation work — so it has to handle losing the internet gracefully.

  • Online check-ins happen quietly in the background, about once every 24 hours.
  • Short outages (a few hours, a couple of days) have no effect. Moonshine just runs.
  • Extended offline use — after about 7 days with no successful check-in, Moonshine requires you to reconnect before continuing. You'll get a warning dialog a day or two before the cutoff so it doesn't surprise you in the middle of a show.

If you know you'll be on-site for a multi-day installation with no internet, plug in and launch Moonshine once a day before going offline to reset the timer. Or contact us in advance — we can issue an extended-offline grant for known events (festivals, installations, ships at sea, etc.) up to 30 days.

Updates

You can install Moonshine updates from the Downloads section of your TEC ID dashboard. The same license key works across all versions within your update window (the first year by default; longer if you've renewed).

If you're on an older version and the activation dialog says "this version is no longer supported", download the latest installer and reactivate.

Troubleshooting Moonshine

Most activation problems are covered in Troubleshooting. A few that are Moonshine-specific:

  • "TouchDesigner can't find moonshine components" — make sure the Moonshine palette is loaded. This is an install issue, not a license issue.
  • "Activation succeeded but the components are still locked" — restart TouchDesigner. The license check happens once at project load, and Moonshine doesn't re-check mid-session.
  • "Past due banner inside TD" — your subscription has a payment problem (this only applies if you have an active subscription add-on; the base Moonshine license is perpetual). Update payment from your dashboard.